by Kat Cotton
Ren jumped up. “We do. Why are you just lollygagging around? Put your clothes on and let’s go.”
Chapter 35
AFTER I FILLED OUT the release paperwork, we stopped to check in on Mr. Norton. I got to the ward door and couldn’t walk any further. I could see him from the doorway, hooked up to machines, all weak and frail.
Grabbing Ren’s wrist, I indicated for him to go in without me. I clung to the door frame while I waited.
A nurse approached me.
“Your father?” she asked.
I shook my head. “My teacher.” Although that didn’t seem adequate enough to describe Mr. Norton. He was so much more than just a teacher.
“He’s a fighter.” She patted my arm. “It’ll take time but he’ll be out of here as good as new.”
He’d better be or I’d give him the biggest black mark in the history of black marks. And I’d find out who was behind this and bust their innards.
Ren didn’t stick around long.
“He’s not conscious. I checked the drawer and got his phone, though.” Then he held up a Ziplock bag with a busted phone in it.
“I told him not to check his messages while he was driving.”
“Do you think that’s what caused the accident?” Ren slipped the phone into his pocket.
“Nope. That car came out of nowhere. They were gunning for us.”
Ren headed for the bus stop when we walked out of the hospital. He’d definitely changed over the past few weeks. The Ren I used to know wouldn’t have even considered taking the bus. He’d have had a chauffeur-driven car waiting.
“We’ll get a taxi back to school, rich boy.” I figured I could afford the indulgence. “We don’t have time for the bus.”
“Have you heard any more about happened with Miranda?” I asked Ren as we drove back to school. “I tried to find some news but there was nothing.”
Ren didn’t speak for a while. He stared out the window as though he hadn’t heard me. Oh no. Had I crossed some line with him again?
Just as my anger started to rise, he spoke.
“We have people who keep things like that out of the news. We don’t like our name associated with negative events. But the police have a suspect in custody.”
I guess I’d never find out what Miranda wanted to tell me but I had my suspicions.
My muscles clenched as we neared the accident site. I hadn’t thought to tell the cab driver to take a different route. And I hadn’t thought it would freak me out as much as it did. The wrecked car had been taken away but skid marks crisscrossed the road.
Ren grabbed my hand, squeezing tight until my breathing returned to normal.
When we got back to school, Ren headed to his dorm. “You’ll have to go to your room alone. I can’t go up there.”
I rolled my eyes. “Like that matters. And if Oscar and Blake are around, we should be together.”
Dior rushed into the elevator just before the doors closed.
“Have you heard about Oscar and Blake?” She leaned over to be all confidential even though we were the only ones in there. “Suspension. Maybe expelled. For beating up Angela. Their parents and the Blackstones are fighting it out right as we speak. Mrs. Blackstone is threatening to press charges even.”
Dior’s eyes grew wide as she waited for my response.
I tried to make my eyes equally as big and even added a little squeal since I could hardly let on I already knew. I’m pretty sure Oscar’s family would do anything in their power to keep this out of the courts. No one would want vampire involvement mentioned.
“Have you heard anything about Angela?” I asked. I should’ve checked myself before leaving the hospital. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine.” Dior rolled her eyes. “Out of her coma two minutes and she’s sending me a huge list of things she needs. I guess she can’t look frumpy around all those cute doctors.”
We rushed down the hallway to my room. I dropped my swipe card as I got it out of my wallet then bashed my head on the door as I bent to pick it up.
“Ouch!” I rubbed my head and opened the door.
Something wasn’t right. I sniffed the air. It smelled different and there was a buzz of strange energy around me.
I put my hand out to stop Ren while I investigated.
That smell had nothing about it that said Oscar. It was more floral and pleasant. I tiptoed into the room. At least it didn’t look like anyone had ransacked it.
Under the bed... definitely under the bed.
Yep, the tip of a shoe stuck out. I jumped on the bed, hoping to flush them out.
“Ren?” He stood near my desk, staring at the framed photos of my parents. “Hey, give me a hand here.”
The person under my bed squealed. “It’s okay. We’ll come out.”
Definitely not Oscar and Blake, judging from the girlie voice.
The two of them climbed out. Ari and Polly.
“What are you doing in my room?”
Ren moved to block the door.
“I didn’t realize the rooms up here were so fancy,” Polly said.
“And so warm.” Ari dusted herself down.
“Yeah, you aren’t up here to check out the decor.” I opened my drawer. Farran’s ring was gone. “Hand it over.”
They both stared at me. I stared back, still shocked they weren’t Oscar and Blake.
I held out my hand. If they wanted to play it like that, fine. My power gathered within me.
“She’s glowing,” Ari hissed to Polly. “Glowing like a Christmas tree.”
The two of them huddled together. I raised my hand and they floated off the floor. Just an inch.
Polly’s face twisted in fear while tears rolled down Ari’s face. They’d break after a minute or two of this.
“Give me the ring.”
“I can’t.” Ari’s ashen face almost made me relent but I needed that ring.
“Give it to me.”
“We can’t.” Ari floated higher. “If we do, she’ll kill us.”
Chapter 36
I LOWERED POLLY AND Ari to the floor. I needed to get information from them and scaring them half to death wouldn’t do that.
“We need to have the whole group involved in this discussion,” Ren said. “There’s a lot more going on than we first thought. If it’d been Oscar and Blake, we could’ve beaten the information out of them but these two, not so much.”
Ren’s grin made me think he’d have enjoyed beating Oscar and Blake. And, to be honest, he wasn’t alone there.
I shook my head. “Most of the group aren’t talking to me.”
“This is serious,” Ren said. “We can’t do this on our own. I’ll call them and we’ll all meet in the scholarship room. I’ll get Tarragon to disable his wards.”
“That was Tarragon? He locked me out of the training room?”
Ren shrugged. “Who do you think did it?”
I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess I’d figured it’d just happened or maybe one of those operatives was involved.
“Fine then. We meet in the scholarship room.” I didn’t like the idea of facing any of that group but this situation was too urgent to get all sensitive with my feelings.
“You’re not going to kill us?” Polly trembled, making me feel bad about trying to intimidate her.
I shook my head. “We seem to have the same goal. We’re going to help you.”
“Phew.” Ari gave a wavery grin. “Because all this summoning we’ve been doing seems to go a bit wrong.”
I grinned back then stopped, the grin still halfway across my face. “The summoning?”
Ren and I exchanged glances. What the hecking had these girls been doing?
Ren got out his phone and started calling the rest of the group.
“I’m going to tell my mother I want to be upgraded to the elite floor next year,” Polly said to Ari as we waited for the elevator. “You get all kinds of luxury.”
“Well, we’ll be able to
afford it when —”
They looked at me and both shut up. This was about money? That’s why they’d been trying to summon Mrs. Worthington. I wouldn’t say anything until we gathered with the others but I’d keep that in mind. Mrs. Worthington would have money to burn once she got corporeal. Hey, wait, did they know...
“Who are you trying to summon?” I asked them.
Ren stiffened but I had to find out if they knew.
“We can’t see her face just a purple light, kind of like when you went all glowy,” said Ari.
“And the smell. She smells like violets.”
Angela hadn’t mentioned that but then Angela wore perfume so strong that no other scent would be noticeable.
Ren turned pale. There was no mistake. This was Mrs. Worthington.
When we walked into the scholarship room, Lucas and Britney were the only ones there. Great. Just what I needed. The “hate Cherry” committee.
Britney rushed across the room and threw her arms around me. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Please. Pretty please with a cherry on top. Not you, I mean an actual cherry. I’m a horrible, horrible friend.” She let me go and glared at Polly. “You said she was washing blood off her arms.”
“It wasn’t blood?”
“It was mud, you dingbat.” I glared at her now. “Get your facts straight.”
“Everyone knows it was Oscar and Blake,” Lucas said. “They confessed.”
Polly and Ari gasped. I guess they’d been too busy trying to break and enter into my room to keep up with school gossip.
The others arrived and I tried to tell them everything in a logical manner.
“Let me see Mr. Norton’s phone,” Nova asked. “I might be able to help.”
“I’m not sure magic can fix phones.” But I handed it to him.
Polly and Ari gasped for the hundredth time in minutes.
“I was actually planning to use technology.” Nova rolled his eyes. I think he hadn’t quite forgiven me for almost frying him. “I’ll be back in a minute. I need my laptop.”
“So, let me recap,” Mark said, not caring that Nova left the room. “It seems we have two different issues going on here. One, the whole lure Angela to her death and get stuff from Mr. Quiller issue.”
“Yep. The deal I was too morally good to take but Oscar and Blake weren’t.” I figured it wouldn’t hurt to reiterate my strong stand.
Mark ignored me. “And then the whole Ren’s mother issue.”
Polly gasped again. “The woman, the purple woman, she’s Ren’s mother?”
“We’re going to have to wipe their memories after this,” I said to Tarragon.
He nodded. “Affirmative.”
Ari put her hands over her head. “No way.”
Actually, I didn’t want to say it but Polly and Ari had already had their memories wiped after the school dance.
Mark huffed then turned his attention to Ren. “Your mother compelled Angela to steal the ring which she somehow lost and you found?”
My hand shot in the air, then I remembered I didn’t need to do that. “Do you think Ren finding it was an accident? Maybe Mrs. Worthington wanted him to find it. Angela was just a conduit.”
Mark rubbed his chin. “That’s entirely possible. But that made Ren a target for Mr. Quiller. Would she want that?”
“It also activated his powers. Don’t forget that bit. Without Mr. Quiller trying to wipe out Ren and everyone else at that dance, he might’ve thought he was just ordinary for the rest of his life.”
Ren scoffed. “You forget, I was never ordinary.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Then we had that whole you and Ren being kidnapped and experimented on business.”
I didn’t want to mention that included the whole me being responsible for Ren’s father’s death business so I just nodded.
“You went looking for Ren’s mother and found out nothing except the name Sunnyhills, which is a place in another dimension for mentally challenged supernaturals.”
“Not just mentally challenged but criminally insane.”
Nova returned with his laptop. He sat on the floor in the corner, next to the power outlet.
“And don’t forget Miranda,” I said. “I have my own theory there. She joined the Worthington’s staff just after his mother left and died when Mrs. Worthington started gaining enough power to solidify. I don’t think that’s coincidence.”
“You think Miranda was my mother?” Ren shot me a death stare. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe not your mother but someone used by your mother. She didn’t want to leave you entirely. I mean, if Miranda was actually your mother, she’d have to have used some kind of glamor or spell and I’m not sure that’s sustainable over a long period of time.”
I checked with Tarragon.
He nodded. “It’d be impossible, especially if she literally didn’t exist on this plane. It’s possible she shared control of the woman’s body, maybe getting stronger and stronger until she had full command.”
Britney nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. Of course. Yes. And we also know these two girls have been messing with the dark arts —”
“Hey, it wasn’t so dark.” Polly jumped half out of her seat but Mark ignored her.
“— messing with things they know nothing about and summoning creatures through the veil.”
“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds bad.” Polly folded her arms and pouted. “We were approached by the purple woman who said she’d give us a small fortune if we helped her. You don’t understand what it’s like being one of the poorest students at a rich school like this.”
I coughed. I coughed a lot.
“Sorry,” Polly said. “I guess you do. But we wanted to be as good as everyone else. We wanted the designer clothes and the nice shoes and the rooms on the top floor with their high thread count bed sheets. So yeah, we agreed to help her. Only, every time she spoke to us, we could never remember a thing about her later on, just the purple glow and the violets. And we still haven’t got one red cent from that woman.”
Mark nodded.
“Yeah, guys. You’re forgetting something else. Someone tried to kill me and Mr. Norton. They slammed into our car. Mr. Norton is still in intensive care.”
“So, now to the most important thing here,” Polly said. “Are you guys going to help us summon the purple woman?”
With that, chaos broke out.
“We shouldn’t.” Lucas folded his arms. “We have no idea what this woman wants and it’d be messing with things we know nothing about.”
“We definitely should.” Tarragon stared at Lucas. “We need to at least try. And if that woman could get these two to do her dirty work, she’s not going to stop. She’ll pick someone else to work for her and we’ll just get more and more demons coming through.”
The discussion buzzed around me but they seemed to be forgetting something important here. This was Ren’s mother they were talking about.
I glanced at him and he gave me a shaky smile.
“She bought me honey and warm milk.” His voice was low enough that only I heard it.
“Huh?”
“Miranda. From the first night she worked with us, she bought me honey and warm milk. She knew it was my favorite. I thought Mrs. Cavendish must’ve told her but I found later that wasn’t true. She just knew herself.”
Chapter 37
I STOOD UP AND CLAPPED my hands together to cut through the noise. “We could talk about this forever but it’s getting us nowhere. There’s only one way to resolve this.”
Ren stared at his hands, not giving any indication of what he wanted, even though everybody turned to him.
“It’s up to you,” I whispered to him. “If you don’t want to, I won’t let anyone here do a thing.”
Because if it came to a battle of strength, no one here could take on Ren and I. For the others, this wasn’t a personal matter but, for Ren, this was his mother. What we did here would affect his who
le life.
“Do you really think we can do this?” he asked.
“We have the ring and we have all our powers. If anyone can do it, we can.”
Ren nodded. “We should do it then.”
“I know it’s your mother and all,” Lucas said, “But can I just remind everyone that she was responsible for Farran’s death. She’s killed one student. She’s in a place for the criminally insane and — sorry, Ren — but maybe she’s there for a reason. I mean a reason other than Mr. Worthington wanting to get rid of her.”
But everyone else ignored him.
“Tarragon, you and I should go through the ritual with Polly and Ari.” Britney jumped up. “Lucas, help Mark keep the room secure. Nova, you keep working on that phone.”
“What about Ren and I?” It seemed like we were close to useless here.
“We need your power,” Tarragon said. “Do that freaky thing where you grind your birthmarks against each other. That’s got to help.”
“Huh? Birthmarks?” Polly asked.
“They have these birthmarks on their hips. Ren’s is a sun, Cherry’s is a star.”
“The sun and the star will join together,” Ari said, and she and Polly exchanged looks. “The sun and the star.”
I gasped, and I wasn’t the only one. “What exactly did she say?”
“She told us a bunch of stuff we didn’t understand. She talked about the sun and the star and about a prophecy. But it’s all fuzzed up in my brain and I don’t know any details.”
“Okay, clear the room.”
We folded the chairs up and cleared the room while Polly and Tarragon collected stuff from their dorms. Ari and Britney sat together doing some kind of strange breathing.
Ren stared out the window. I could sense the tension inside him. I tried to look comforting but sometimes people thought my comforting face looked more like constipation. Still, I was the only one who could reach him, the only one who had the tiniest idea of what he was going through.
“I can’t believe my father sent her to a place like that,” he said. “She must’ve suffered so much.”
I took his hand. “It will be okay,” I said to him. “I’m sure it will be okay.”
